It is known that road pavers are equipped with several operating stations that each comprise a large number of contact-related buttons which can be used to activate different operating functions of the road paver. As the operating functions of road pavers have strongly increased over time, the functional buttons in the respective operating stations have multiplied accordingly. The increased number of buttons requires a more skillful handling by the operator.
Moreover, experience has shown that conventional contact-related buttons can be subject to the effects of wear that can deteriorate the operability.
Also, the contact-related pressing of a button that takes a certain time is disadvantageous as the respective operating function is only activated after having pressed the button. Especially the waiting time for a certain operating function increases when a certain button pressing sequence is required by several buttons to start the desired operating function. To provide the operator quickly with operating functions, a contact-related pressing of buttons to activate the respective operating functions has often proven to be not satisfactory.
EP 2 407 705 B1 discloses a road paver with a presence detection system. The presence detection system is configured to interrupt the operating functions of the road paver when the operator of the road paver is not on the road paver at a predetermined distance to the operating panel.